The “Hollywood on the Bayou” display, put together by Ed and Susan Poole from Gretna, is on display in the Archives room of the Ellender Memorial Library and details the history of the Louisiana film industry starting in 1896.
Ed and Susan Poole are film historians who have documented more than one thousand Louisiana-made and Louisiana-themed movies. The couple has also authored several books on the topic and given lectures and presentations to educational groups.
Clifton Theriot, archivist and associate librarian of the Ellender Memorial Library, said he first heard about the Pooles when the library ordered one of their books.
“The Pooles wanted to gather as much information about films in Louisiana as possible and record it because it is being lost,” Theriot said. “They want people to be aware about the history Louisiana has with movies going back more than 100 years.”
Theriot ended up speaking to Ed Poole after the Pooles did a presentation for the Lafourche Parish Heritage Society and asked the couple about their collection and if they would be interested in doing an exhibit.
With the largest collection in the state, Ed Poole said he knew that he and his wife had more than enough information.
“We have never done an exhibit with our collection and research,” Ed Poole said. “He brought us over to the college and showed us the space. This is the first time we’ve ever shown some of the pieces from our personal collection. There are 100 original pieces in the exhibit from our personal collection.”
The exhibit is chronological and visitors can see the progression of the Louisiana film industry through movie posters and the Pooles’ research. The exhibit outlines the industry from its start in 1896 to its current status with Louisiana as third in film production behind California and New York.
“I never knew how far back filming in Louisiana went,” Theriot said. “It is all the way back to the Silent Movie Era and spans the globe. The exhibit of the posters is of Louisiana movies, but some of the posters are from other countries including Egypt, France and Japan.”
The exhibit has also implemented nine QR codes and visitors can use smartphones to see special details the Pooles added.
“We’re experimenting with QR codes,” Ed Poole said. “We only had room for about two cases per decade, but we had so much more material to share. We could have probably used the same exhibit space and filled it up with just one decade of our material.”
The QR codes feature extra clips featuring clips like Pontchartrain Billy, a 200-pound Louisiana alligator used in almost 500 films, and a clip of a controversial onscreen kiss in the movie “The Kiss.”
“Back in 1898, ‘The Kiss’ caused uproar because people were upset about how scandalous it was,” Ed Poole said. “We wanted to show a clip of that film.”
Certain decades also have QR codes with posters and videos from other movies that were filmed during that decade.
The exhibit also has themed displays including movies about Louisiana’s bayous and swamps, music, plantations, voodoo and occult, sports, and Mardi Gras.
“Not all of the movies based in or about Louisiana give us a positive image, but just knowing the history always helps me to enjoy them,” Susan Poole said.
Ed and Susan Poole started their vast collection at the same time as their romance.
Ed and Susan purchased their first piece during one of their first dates in the mid-70s. As the couple strolled through the French Quarter, they noticed someone selling movie posters.
“When you are just starting to date someone, of course you’re showing off a little more so I went over and got her a “Gidget” poster she was admiring,” Ed Poole said.
Susan Poole said she never thought that poster would be such a large part of her future.
“We were just starting to date, and he was just trying to impress me,” Susan Poole said. “I would not have thought that this would be my future husband and my future career.”
Ed Poole said later in the relationship he and Susan decided to go back for more posters, but the seller was gone.
 “They’re not for sale to the public normally, which we did not know at the time,” Ed Poole said. “If they had been easy to find we probably would not have searched for them that much, but because they were hard to find, we started searching for them.”
Ed and Susan Poole married and continued their hunt for movie posters as a hobby. The couple began putting ads in newspapers and buying collections. Ed Poole said they eventually began selling off the extras that were included in some bulk purchases they came across.
“We literally had to move because we had so many,” Ed Poole said. “We became dealers, then wholesalers, then we opened a retail store at the Lakeside Mall in Metairie, and we were there for five years.”
Ed Poole said although collecting the posters was simply a hobby at the time, the couple liked to research the posters that they purchased. There was little information on the movie industry in relation to posters and film art.
“We would talk back and forth with other dealers in other parts of the country and then as we started doing our own research, we began answering questions of other dealers and collectors,” Ed Poole said.
In 1997,  the Pooles wrote their first reference book on film accessories called “Collecting Movie Posters,” published by McFarland.
After the couple closed their Lakeside Mall store in 2000, they prepared to publish an article for a major pricing company.
“The company said it was too large, and they couldn’t run it so they would put it on their website,” Ed Poole said. “They instead sponsored us to put the first reference website online, called LearnaAboutMoviePosters.com. We started off with 200 pages on the site and continued. Now it’s up to 200,000 pages online.”
In 2005, the Pooles started the first movie poster reference database, which takes movie posters from around the world and cross references them.
“We’ve got 97,000 posters online at a website called MoviePosterDataBase.com, which is the only cross-reference research database out there,” Ed Poole said.
By 2010, the Pooles had released 13 reference books with topics including international movie posters, the legality of movie posters, identification of movie still-shots, lithography plate numbers, studio logos, and printer tags.
In 2011, while the Pooles researched information for their personal Louisiana movie poster collection, they realized the lack of research and history available about the Louisiana film industry.
“There was no information whatsoever on Louisiana films,” Ed Poole said. “So, we had been compiling the information over the years,  and in 2011, we realized we couldn’t let it all slip away. So we wrote the book “Hollywood on the Bayou,” which has 1,200 movies in or about Louisiana. It’s gone from there.”
The Pooles also released “Louisiana Film History,” which is more of the storytelling of the history. Now the Pooles said they are trying to introduce the information to schools. Tulane University has already adopted “Louisiana Film History” as required reading for their film students.
“With the new Louisiana film production the way it is, this foundation of education has to come to support anything else for growth,” Ed Po
ole said. “It’s important for tourism. We think people would want to know about old films like “Louisiana Hussy,” “Jezebel” and “King Creole.” They would want to know where they were filmed.”
Ed and Susan pride themselves on the knowledge that they are able to pass on to others.
“Susan and I have termed ourselves advanced film accessory researchers because we are the only ones in the world who do this,” Ed Poole said. “We give classes and train auction houses and such to teach their employees how to determine where posters are from, the artists, printer’s information, logos, and verification of whether posters are original or a reissue.”
The research the Pooles have gathered is often used by major auction houses, dealers, museums and research facilities around the world. Their research has even been used  in four trials and by the FBI in a fraud prosecution.
“We can’t afford to forget our history,” Ed Poole said. “Film accesories are historical documents and the next best thing when many pieces of our older films are already lost.”
According to the exhibit, millions of dollars have been spent on the preservation of film and film acccessories. Despite these efforts, last year, the American Film Institute said 90 percent of all silent films made in the United States have already been lost forever.
“This is why we must educate and keep this history alive,” Ed Poole said.
Susan Poole said movies have always been a part of her family’s life and their passion for the film industry, especially in Louisiana, has only grown with time.
“We are movie watchers,” Susan Poole said. “That’s our entertainment. My daughter and son grew up knowing movies and enjoying classics. My son didn’t enjoy the black and whites as much as my daughter did, but they still share the love for them with us.”
Ed and Susan Poole will do a presentation and lecture on March 4 for the University’s The 15th Annual Jubilee and will be in the library’s Multipurpose Room on the third floor. The presentation will be followed by a book signing.
Ed and Susan Pooles’ book, “Louisiana Film History,” is available in the University bookstore and the “Hollywood on the Bayou” display will also be available for viewing in Archives now until June 21.